‘How Great Thou Art’ gets reboot for 75th anniversary
Grammy Award-winning songwriter and worship leader Matt Redman has written hundreds, maybe thousands of songs in his celebrated career.
For his latest release, however, he only wrote one verse that was quite possibly one of the most challenging verses he’s ever written. This was a new verse added to the 75-year-old classic hymn “How Great Thou Art.”
The song is under copyright and has a publisher, which typically means a writer can’t tweak it in any way. But in this case, Redman was asked by the song’s publisher, the Stuart Hine Trust, to write a new verse and record a new version – with a purpose.
“This was interesting because the publisher reached out and said it’s coming up to the 75th anniversary of the hymn,” Redman told The Tennessean. “Most of the song was written in the mountains of Ukraine. So they said they would like to mark these two things by writing a new section and have all the proceeds from that go to humanitarian aid for Ukraine.”
Originally penned by Stuart K. Hine, a missionary in the 1930s traveling in the Carpathian Mountains in central Europe, the song was inspired by his 300-mile journey through an area that now includes Ukraine.
Redman accepted this challenge with a bit of trepidation, saying, “This is one of the world’s most beloved hymns. That’s usually something you don’t mess with.”
But he didn’t mess with it alone. He called in 15 friends to help.
“How Great Thou Art (Until That Day)” features Redman, Chris Tomlin, Hillary Scott, Cody Carnes, Kari Jobe, Naomi Raine, Taya, Ryan Ellis, Jon Reddick, Blessing Offor, Brian Johnson, Jenn Johnson, Matt Maher, Pat Barrett, Benjamin William Hastings and Mitch Wong.
The new verse, written by Redman and Wong, says:
Until that day
When heaven bids us welcome And as we walk this broken warring world,
Your kingdom come,
Deliver us from evil,
And we’ll proclaim our God how great You are!
“I got in a room with Mitch Wong, and we said, ‘Let’s try to lean in to a structure that fits with the original hymn,’ Redman said. “The key for the lyric was we wanted it to speak to the situation in Ukraine. ‘War’ isn’t a word usually used in a worship song, but in this case it seemed appropriate.”
He added that the creation of the new verse was a continuation of the song’s final verse.
“We wanted to embrace the reality of the world we live in,” he said. “If you look at the Psalms in the Bible, they are so real. They are the good, the bad and the ugly, and I think that’s really important.
It’s a broken world, but we can sing faith and hope over that.
Redman and Wong, along with Integrity Music, gifted the new version of the song entirely to the Stuart Hine Trust to ensure that the charity benefits from the song’s royalties. As a result, proceeds from this version will be channeled toward humanitarian relief and rebuilding efforts in Ukraine as the country faces ongoing conflict and crisis.
The new song was recorded both at Gold Pacific Studios in Los Angeles and RCA Studio B in Nashville, which is the same spot Elvis Presley recorded his Grammy Award-winning rendition of the same song.